If you go

Winner of the Peabody, Critics’ Choice, BAFTA and Emmy awards for Best Documentary, plus Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary, Ava DuVernay's documentary refers to the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which reads, "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States."

The progression from that second qualifying clause to the horrors of mass criminalization and the sprawling American prison industry is laid out by DuVernay in the film. With a potent mixture of archival footage and testimony from a dazzling array of activists, politicians, historians and formerly incarcerated women and men, DuVernay creates a work of grand historical synthesis.